fast and curious

April 2014

After graduating from college my best friend and I went backpacking through Europe for a month. One of my favorite parts was the time we spent in Munich, Germany. I loved everything about it; the sausage, the beer gardens, the people. However, the only german I knew was the phrase "Ein maß bitte" which served me well enough at the time. Yet I feel that my time there would have been even more enjoyable had I been able to speak German.

Here I am 5 years later, longing to return to Munich. On my next trip I am determined to arrive with the ability to speak the local language. It's at this point that I turned to the german instructional videos on Curious by Meister Lehnsherr. I breezed through his alphabet and pronunciation and soon found myself working on Introductions and Goodbyes.

What I like most about the lessons is that the teacher pauses and repeats each new word and phrase to give you a chance to practice it. At the end of the lesson he pretends to have a conversation with you. He asks you questions and pauses for a brief moment to give you a chance to answer. This was an excellent way to review what I had just learned, however, I still wanted to practice my new found skills on a real person.

With my previous travel mate a few hundred miles away and my fiancé unwilling to go on camera, I was left with my dog Stella. Now, Stella is a good old dog, but her pronunciation leaves a lot to be desired. Not to worry though. With a little help from My Talking Pet, Stella was just as good at German as I was.

Check out my project submission on Curious to see our conversation and give us feedback on our pronunciation.

Like millions of people who don’t have access to a washer/dryer at their place of residence, I go to a laundromat to get my clothes cleaned and spend $$$ each year. After watching How to Clean Your Washing Machine, I was curious how well (or badly) a commercial washing machine would fare.

I used ½ cup of bleach instead of the 1 cup specified in the lesson because I only had concentrated bleach on hand.

After selecting the hottest cycle, inserting 9 quarters (that’s $2.25!), pouring bleach into the proper compartment and firmly closing the door, I pressed the big green START button and waited to see what happened.

Soap suds appeared immediately and continued for the 3 wash cycles the machine is programmed for! The interior certainly looks cleaner and shinier when the washer finished ~30 minutes later.

Before

After

I’m stuck using a laundromat or hand washing everything for now. However, I know a cleaner washing machine to use for my next laundry day!

Easter Chicks Egg HoldersThis Easter, decorate your shelves and tables with cute crafts using upcycled materials! Let ArtDaniela show you how to reuse toilet paper rolls, and transform them into these tiny, adorable Easter chicks.

Plastic Bag BunniesWant to recycle your old plastic bags and work on a cute Easter craft? Learn to make bunnies out of your plastic bags, rubber bands, and sharpies from Sophie's World! Easy for kids and adults alike.

Make DIY String Easter EggsCelebrate the return of Spring with string Easter eggs. Made of glue, string and balloons, these easy DIY decorations courtesy of DIYnThings are great crafts for kids and adults!

Curious.com is secure.Like more than half of the internet, we had to move quickly to get ahead of the heartbleed vulnerability last week. We found out about it on Monday along with the rest of the engineering community, and immediately took steps to patch our servers, followed shortly after by updating our encryption keys.

How does this affect you on Curious?We think it's highly unlikely that we were a target or that any of your data was stolen. We require very little sensitive data (first name, last name, email, and password) and we use a 3rd party for credit transactions, so our servers never see a credit card number. As a precautionary measure, you may want to change your Curious password here if you are concerned.

What steps should you take elsewhere?For any sites that have sensitive data, we recommend changing your password, and avoid re-using passwords or password patterns. We know this is a pain, so this might be a good time to get a password manager (LastPass and 1Password are both good - see this article for comparisons). For more advice on password security, see this.

On behalf of the Internet, we'd like to apologize for the inconvenience. We also use the web, so we feel your pain.

I totally enjoy dyeing eggs at Easter time, It makes me feel like a kid again. I love making a mess and showing off the gems to my peeps. But, this year, I wanted to up my game. I wanted magic…Enter Curious. The O'Neil Sisters lesson was egg-cellent.

Their infectious smiles and good humor is totally mood altering and their eggs came out so bright and saturated. I took the lesson on my iPhone in the Safeway parking lot so I could know what materials I needed for my egg-stravaganza. They used the standard issue teardrop packaged food coloring, and added quite a bit of vinegar to the water, that seemed to make all the difference.

On the way home from Safeway, I had a vision for my eggs. The world needed to have spectrum gradient eggs in it and I was the man to produce them. I devised a plan of layering the colors (see diagram) in order to create the green, purple and orange right on the egg!

I was pumped to get home and try. My egg-spectations were high. I boiled the eggs and prepared three baths of primary colors. The kit came with green, but green was for weaklings and I am a champion. I knew that blue and yellow make green and with a little careful dipping green would be mine!

I held the first egg with my fingers approximately 4/7 of the way into the yellow dye, counting off the three minutes (which turns out to be a long time to hold an egg between your fingers). I let it dry and then dipped into the red halfway up the yellow and held it for only 1 minute (I only needed a light coat of red to let the yellow show through to give me orange. I removed the egg and let it dry, then I dipped the very end in to the red again for the full 3 minutes to get a nice crimson.

Oh man, it was working, my fingers were tired but it was looking cool. After the colors dried thoroughly I turned the egg over and dipped the egg into the blue, I submerged it just a bit past the yellow and held it in place for only 30 seconds. The blue seemed dark and I really wanted to make sure to let the yellow shine through the blue so I could achieve green. BAM! I then dipped just the bottom 2/7th in blue again, and held for the full three minutes. Then, after drying, dipped just the end into the red dye for a minute making a sweet purple!

I had achieved a pretty darn good spectrum egg. The O'Neil sisters lesson and dye recipe worked egg-stremely well and I think the world is a better place now that these rainbow eggs exist in it.

My son and I had fun this morning watching Marty Brandl’s tips, tax and discounts lesson and practicing estimation. Charlie hadn’t done much estimating before because math answers in class need to be precise. He was surprised to hear about contexts where being exact isn’t important. Too bad I can’t just estimate everything on my tax return forms!

After practicing we started looking online for more information about tipping. How did the custom originate? How does the practice differ in other regions? Are you supposed to tip barbers the same percentage as restaurant wait staff? Most of those questions were answered on the extensive Wikipedia page, but an infographic on Mint’s blog was more fun. It shows tip etiquette for a variety of countries and a lot of detail on customary tip ranges for 15 different US services. And did you know that people tip $40 billion each year in the US?!

Whether you are comparing prices with various discounts or want to quickly bust out a fair or generous tip, Marty’s lesson is a great refresher.

Happy almost weekend! At Curious.com, our Monday mornings are filled with animated discussions about the projects we dug into over the weekend. We chose our Top 5 Fun Weekend Project lessons so you can also end your week with some learning fun.

Our team is just as eclectic as the lessons below. Kristen usually relaxes with some needlepoint crafting. James likes to get a little greasy repairing his car. Ron is a talented clay sculptor (he made an awesome Christmas ornament a few months ago!), and Joe often photographs concerts in San Francisco.

We have a curious and creative team!

The lessons below are a good place to start (or continue) pursuing your own hobbies. Choose whichever lessons pique your fancy, and get your learn on - there’s something for everyone.

Don’t forget to tweet us @Curious and let us know what you plan to learn this weekend.

We're excited to share our Top 5 Fun Weekend Projects for Spring! Spring is all about growth - so it's a perfect time to try something new. Choose a lesson to work on as a solo project, or get family and friends involved. We hope this weekend takes you to exciting new heights!

How to Make a Mini ScrapbookAre you an artsy type? Learn to make your own book from scratch. Erin Bassett teaches you how to fold, cut, and glue paper to make a colorful and original mini book. This would be a thoughtful birthday gift for anyone in your life.

How to Extract Strawberry DNACalling all science nerds (er, fans)! Ever wonder what DNA actually looks like in real life, not just under a microscope? Wonder no more! Extract DNA from a strawberry with Myles Power, and see for yourself.

DIY Project: Vintage Vinyl PurseLearn how to create a unique DIY bag from vintage vinyl records! Crafty Amy shows you how to prepare the records, then assemble and sew the purse. This project would be fun to do with a friend.

Stop Motion Animation BasicsLearn the basics of stop motion animation and get started on your own epic productions! This tutorial from Michael Parks covers setup, software, and animation principles. A perfect activity to hunker down with on a lackadaisical Saturday.

After stopping by the local store - thanks again, Willows! - I queued up the lessons, put on workout clothes, and placed the wine in the freezer to chill. Challenge accepted.

The Binge Hour:

Lesson 1. The first challenge on my list was uBloom’s flower arranging lesson. I trimmed the stems, filled my vase with water, and in about 3 minutes I had put together my first flower arrangement.

Total time spent: 5 minutes, 45 seconds

Lesson 2. Next up was the history of Saint Patrick - though it turns out Patrick wasn’t even his real name! For this challenge, I submitted a photo of the green cupcakes I baked in honor of Mr. Maewyn Succat.

Total time spent: 9 minutes, 10 seconds

Lesson 3. With only 9 minutes down, it was time for the third challenge - French Phrases for Love. My favorite new phrase is "Je vis d'amour et d'eau fraiche." Apparently "I live on love and fresh water" is a popular saying amongst French lovers.

Total time spent: 24 minutes

Lesson 4. After racing through the first 3 lessons, it was time for pilates with Sean Vigue. This 8 minute beginner's routine was the perfect way to unwind after a long day.

Total time spent: 32 minutes, 45 seconds

Lesson 5. After pilates I couldn’t wait to taste the two different wines I picked out - I even got my roommates to partake in this lesson! I pressed play, relaxed, and sipped on wine for the last 30 minutes of the challenge.

Total time spent: 1 hour

Challenge complete. Good luck and happy (binge) learning! Tweet @curious to let us know which 5 lessons you chose!

P.S. For a full list of the first 13 lessons, check out the Curious 52 page here.